Like other parts of your body, your spine plays an integral role in your overall health and well-being. It serves as your primary support system to ensure your body will stand and move upright. It’s also essential to have good spinal health, so your body’s internal systems can function properly.
With that in mind, taking care of your spine is crucial for maintaining a good quality of life. When your spine isn’t doing well, you may experience back pain, which can cause you to miss work and stop you from doing your simple, day-to-day tasks.
Hence, if you don’t want to live with back pain and other spine issues for the rest of your life, it’s best to take action now by keeping a healthy spine.
Four Best Practices to Maintain Good Spinal Health
Read on to learn the four best practices to maintain good spinal health:
1. Follow Healthy Lifestyle
One of the best ways to keep your spine working properly is to follow healthy lifestyle habits. These can include:
- Make Proper Nutritional Choices
Eating a healthy diet is essential for your spine health. Some foods are great for building strong bones and preventing the development of osteoporosis and other back issues.
Hence, when making some food choices, it can be good to include foods rich in vitamin B and calcium to ensure a healthier spine. These can consist of beans, cheese, eggs, fruits, fatty fish, leafy vegetables, milk, nuts, and yogurt.
- Keep A Healthy Weight
Like diet, it’s also essential to keep a healthy weight to ensure your spine functions properly. Those extra pounds of yours can cause too much stress to your tendons, ligaments, and spine when you’re overweight. When this happens, you may develop back pain and spine issues.
- Stay Hydrated
It’s also essential to drink plenty of water to maintain fluidity in joints and elasticity in soft tissues. When you’re dehydrated, your spinal disks start to shrink and lose height.
As a result, you’ll become vulnerable to developing painful disk conditions and other spine problems. When this happens, you may need the assistance of a specialist from Dickinson Neurosurgery and others to get the necessary medical treatment.
2. Do Some Spine Exercises
There’s no doubt that exercise can protect your health by improving circulation and losing weight. But performing some regular activities can also be good for your Spinal Health by reducing back pain and preventing back injuries.
The following are some Spinal Health exercises to try to make your spine healthy:
- Strengthening Exercises
With these exercises, you can help stabilize your Spinal Health by keeping the correct posture when you do your daily activities. Most strengthening exercises are designed to improve endurance and increase muscle tone.
- Stretching Exercises
This is another type of exercise to do to ensure your Spinal Health is healthy. When you perform some stretching exercises, you can reduce muscle soreness and muscle strain to improve flexibility. Consequently, you can freely move your arms, back, legs, and neck without hurting them.
If you decide to try some stretching exercises like an abdominal stretch, hamstring stretch, and lower back stretch, make sure to perform them daily and as smoothly to avoid sudden movements.
- Aerobic Exercises
Another way to strengthen your Spinal Health is to do some aerobic exercises. When you regularly perform these physical activities, you can ensure optimum spine health by reducing muscle fatigue and avoiding injury.
Also, even if you’re not an athlete, you can integrate some aerobatic exercises into your day-to-day life such as using stairs when going to work, walking instead of driving to a store and finding a friend to bike, walk, and skate with. However,
if you want more intense exercises, you can try spinning, cycling, swimming laps, and many more.
3. Sleep Properly
Your sleeping position can impact your spine health. When your spine can’t rest in a supported way, you may develop some back pain and other Spinal Health problems. Thus, to maintain a healthy spine, it’s best to do the following:
- Make Sure Your Spine Is Naturally Aligned
To do this, you first need to determine whether you’re a back sleeper or a side sleeper. If you’re a back sleeper, it can be a good idea to place a pillow under your knees to decrease the stress you may be feeling on your back.
If you’re a side sleeper, it’s best to put the pillow between your knees to ensure balanced hips.
- Use A Firm Mattress
4. Observe Good Ergonomics At Work
Since you probably spend most of your time at work sitting at your computer desk all day long, you’re adding too much stress or pressure on your back and spine.
In such a case, it’s vital to practice good ergonomics to improve your sitting position and keep your spine as healthy as possible. These can include:
- Getting the right office chair or desk that suits your body such as the one that supports your lower back;
- Following a good posture while being seated;
- Making some proper shoe choices, especially at work for back and Spinal Health support;
- Taking breaks between your work hours to avoid sitting for long periods;
- Getting up and walking around the office to avoid staying in one position for too long;
- Avoiding cradling your phone between your shoulder and ear;
As you can see, there are many things to do to observe good ergonomics. But in case you’re unsure what to do to improve your working conditions for your spine health, talking to a medical professional to get some recommendations can be a great idea.
Takeaway
Your spine is vital for staying healthy. If it’s not in good condition, you may end up dealing with some health issues such as spinal stenosis, strained muscles, and many more.
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